A Christian Missionary Movement

Messianic Judaism: A Christian Missionary Movement

Messianic Judaism is a Christian movement that began in the 1970s combining a mixture of Jewish ritual and Christianity. There are a vast and growing numbers of these groups, and they differ in how much Jewish ritual is mixed with conventional Christian belief. One end of the spectrum is represented by Jews For Jesus, who simply target Jews for conversion to Christianity using imitations of Jewish ritual solely as a ruse for attracting the potential Jewish converts. On the other end are those who don’t stress the divinity of Jesus, but present him as the “Messiah.” They incorporate distorted Jewish ritual on an ongoing basis. The movement has received criticism from mainstream Christian leaders, for these groups claim to believe in the New Testament and yet gloss over the distinction between the two communities instituted in that work, and for the deceptive tactics used to gain Jewish converts. They are typically very pro-Israel and